This blog is largely deprecated, but is being preserved here for
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date info. My main trade is technology strategy,
process/project management, and performance optimization consulting,
with a focus on enterprise and open source CMS and related
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4/25/2005

They released the first pictures of Brandon Routh in the Superman suit.

Unless one of his new powers is absorbing color, that picture is really desaturated, and that’s not a good representation of what the suit is going to look like – is his face really that pale?

I’ve fixed it up a bit below – the edits were applied across the board to the entire picture, and not in selective areas. I also took the liberty of sharpening it a bit, to compensate for the downsampling they did:

Update: I found another edit, but this one is just the suit colors, and doesn’t take into account that the whole color cast is off.

1. Adobe gets Dreamweaver, which is way more advanced than Go Live, in my limited experience.

2. Adobe gets Fireworks to integrate into ImageReady. I’ve never really used Fireworks, but I’m told that it makes common web graphics a lot easier.

3. Adobe now controls PDF >and< Flash.

And, possibly most importantly:

4. Adobe has been doing a lot of dynamic PDF generation with J2EE. Macromedia has Coldlfusion/JRun. I think, but I’m not sure, that I smell a really kickass CMS brewing here that integrates directly with Adobe’s image server. Moreover, it may be what I’ve been waiting for from Adobe for years – print and web output from the same system, and a web-based interactive system for editing content for print publications based on InDesign (or similar) templates.

4/14/2005

While looking at Kottke’s pictures from Paris, I immediately noticed that he’s got a good eye. But here’s why photography, in my mind, is not just about taking good pictures, but also about solid editing.

I spent about 15 minutes with this, adding sharpening (big difference!), tightening up the color curves, and cropping a little. Granted, I’m making some assumptions about what the day looked like, but I didn’t get the sense that it was really hazy there.

In this particular case, the yellow hose here is such a defining factor that I might even go one step further and give it a real focus:

4/13/2005

‘A San Jose startup is building a “physics accelerator” for PCs that will contain hardware optimized for calculating realistic simulations of real-world physics — they hope that this will bridge the gap between general-purpose PCs and the specialized game-graphics cards in consoles.’

Also, as they point out, it will be very useful for realtime weapons calculations, and I’m sure there have to be porn applications as well.

“In the United States, oil is primarily used for transportation – roughly two-thirds of all oil use, in fact. So, developing an alternative means of powering our cars, trucks, and buses would go a long way towards weaning us, and the world, off of oil. While the so-called “hydrogen economy” receives a lot of attention in the media, there are several very serious problems with using hydrogen as an automotive fuel. For automobiles, the best alternative at present is clearly biodiesel, a fuel that can be used in existing diesel engines with no changes, and is made from vegetable oils or animal fats rather than petroleum.

In this paper, I will first examine the possibilities of producing biodiesel on the scale necessary to replace all petroleum transportation fuels in the U.S.”

4/6/2005

We saw Sin City on Friday, and I wanted to let it gel a little before writing it up. The more I think about it, the more I enjoyed it. It is brutal, ugly, violent, and unpleasant, and also one of the most interesting movies I’ve seen in a LONG time. It captured my interest from the very beginning, and didn’t let go. Unlike Sky Captain, the cinematography is varied and fresh, the pacing is good, and the characters are certainly not boring cookie-cutter templates without life.

Obviously, it was very beautiful, and captured the revolutionary look of the books in a way that has never been done before. But, there’s been a lot of dismissal of the violence and the story as childish and simplistic, and I think it goes way beyond that.

(Some spoilers inside.)

I think that some of what I see here is represented heavily in Dwight’s characterization of Marv. This passage appears in A Dame to Kill For, one of the stories that didn’t make it into the movie, but was obviously important enough for them to use anyway.

I’m no shrink and I’m not saying I’ve got Marv all figured out or anything, but “crazy” just doesn’t explain him. Not to me. Sometimes I think he’s retarded, a big brutal kid who never learned the ground rules about how people are supposed to act around each other. But that doesn’t have the right ring to it either. No, it’s more like there’s nothing wrong with Marv at all–except that he had the rotten luck of being born at the wrong time in history. He’d have been okay if he’d been born a couple thousand years ago. He’d be right at home on some ancient battlefield, swinging an ax into somebody’s face. Or in a Roman arena, taking a sword to other gladiators like him. They’d have tossed him girls like Nancy, back then.

This is pre-pretty Dwight speaking, which was also largely dropped from the movie.

This passage struck me as remarkably apt when I first read it, and again when I heard it delivered on screen.

Sin City itself is, in fact, exactly the kind of world that best fits Marv. For some value of the word, he thrives there. He acquires a drive, in murder and revenge, and while he is ultimately done in by the forces that be, he goes willingly and defiantly to that end, having accomplished his goals of driving some greater evil than he from the world. But if you take the statement in the context of the real world, hopefully it’s true – Marv doesn’t fit here, in the kind of world we’d like to have. Maybe Sin City the story doesn’t either, and that’s okay.

Dwight was my favorite character in the books, and he shines in the movie. Some have complained that he’s portrayed as sexist somehow, as the man that the women of Old Town need to save them from their own evil. I really don’t see that. He’s a man with a plan, yes. He’s a serious badass, yes. But there’s never a sense that Gail and the others can do any less than look out for themselves just fine. Sometimes you need to be saved, and sometimes you need to do the saving. If anything, this is a respectful relationship of equals. “Where to fight. It counts for a lot. But there’s nothing like having your friends show up with lots of guns.”

That Yellow Bastard is just weird. I still have no idea how I feel about that. I do think the parallels between Marv and Hartigan are interesting – they’re both busted for taking out a Roark, they’re both tortured for confessions (which they both sign – and that’s a whole other analysis right there), and they both ultimately feel like their lives are worth trading for something larger than themselves – for Marv, it’s revenge in and of itself; for Hartigan, it’s an end to the chain. Cowardly? Maybe, but he’s also supposed to be MUCH older and in much more pain than he’s accurately portrayed in the movie. I can see where that sort of a decision might seem to make sense.

There’s a lot of layered complexity in here, and I think there’s much more in there than credit is being given for.